Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1451070
44 S P R I N G 2 0 2 2 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y MODERATOR PETER ALBRECHTSEN CAS MPSE: John, I'd love to hear about the dynamics in the scenes that go from big crowds to small, intimate scenes, and how it must have been quite an undertaking to get production sound. JOHN MIDGLEY CAS: Yes, it was mostly trying to control everything. It was a fantastic experience overall. We shot a lot of it at Shepperton Studios [with] two stages locked together. The concourse floor was my bugbear, trying to get carpets down in as many areas as we could, and it was very long. Laying carpet was quite difficult—and there was a lot of steam! TOM: Eugene would work with it as he could, since a lot of it was in the picture and justified. When there were cuts between shots with steam and without, Eugene would add little bursts and things to make the transitions work; it was intricate stuff! JOHN: There were little two-way conversations off in corners to contend with. The bookstore and the flat, the Steadicam shot into the flat, past all the people … it was a fantastic experience! PETER: It's amazing the performances he gets from the kids, and especially the train station inspector, who has a special sound to him, really. George and Marko, what about the Foley for his character? He's got this weird leg, and you can hear that he's coming before he's even there! How did you approach that? MARKO COSTANZO: It was really fun. Every moment of the film we had little things to do like that, and the leg was his signature sound. We just played around a lot, and the cut and mix just worked with everything. I have a little box full of parts for the mouse, which I think was the most difficult thing I've ever done. How do you make little sounds big and still be realistic? George was always saying, "Whoop it up," and there are these things that are minute, it's hard to do! GEORGE A. LARA CAS: Going back to the leg, we went through different variations of sounds and we present that to Eugene and Eugene presents that to Thelma and Marty, and then they had to make a decision on which ones to choose from. Here you need a little more squeak or that doesn't sound right. So [by going] back-and- forth between them, we were able to get the signature sound for the rest of the film. That's the way they like to work; we present material to them and they give us their feedback, and we elaborate from there. All those sounds get built out into little premixes and then eventually, they're going to go into the final and Tommy will be able to elaborate on that. TOM: You know the scene where I thought the Foley was really impressive was the scene where the automaton comes alive. [A]ll the little sounds of the automaton, the drawing on the paper, the sound of the pen and the paper, combined with the music, it was just a beautiful job, a really beautiful job. PETER: The score by Howard Shore is really magnificent and it's so interwoven with everything, and a big part of that is also the live musicians playing there. How did you do that? "It was a delight to work on, and working with Marty and Thelma is like working with one person. They have a very different process from most other filmmakers in terms of how they cut, sound preparation and editing, and so on." –Tom Fleischman CAS